Washington Times

Strolling through the muddy swamps of right-wing media often results in stumbling upon absurd allegations by disturbed wingnuts whose hatred for President Obama and liberal politics overcomes their grasp of reality. But this may be one of the best examples of outright delusion on the part of conservatives whose sanity has never been particularly stable.

The Fox News community website, Fox Nation (whose rap sheet of brazen lies is a mile long) posted an article they regurgitated from the ultra-rightist, “Moonie” Washington Times. The headline is a mind-bogglingly ludicrous declaration that accuses Obama of being preoccupied with lawsuits: “The Obama Way: Litigation Not Leadership.”

SERIOUSLY? This is coming from one of the most prominent media mouthpieces for the Republican Party which, as we all know, just approved a resolution to sue the President – a lawsuit challenging his delay of an ObamaCare component that the GOP actually wants to delay. Talk about your frivolous lawsuits.

The article was written for the Washington Times by Thomas DelBeccaro, former chairman of the California Republican Party. It is a jumble of incoherence that never bothers to validate its premise. There is not a single example of Obama engaging in litigation that he or his administration initiated. Instead, DelBeccaro bleats interminably about how Obama has had to govern without the “benefit” of consensus with the unreasonable right.

DelBeccaro lists a number of examples of legislative division that range from the budget, to ObamaCare, to the environment, to trials of terrorists. But in every example the only thing that DelBeccaro succeeds in proving is that Republicans have been marching in lock-step to obstruct anything this administration has sought to accomplish. DelBeccaro wrote that…

“In fact, since becoming President, Mr. Obama has not undertaken a single effort at building consensus. Not one. For all the claims of partisanship made about President George W. Bush, Mr. Obama’s immediate predecessor, for better or for worse, Mr. Bush had bipartisan support in several key legislative victories. Mr. Bush had Senator Edward Kennedy support one of his bills, The No Child Left Behind Act, and Senator Bernie Sanders support another, Medicare Part D.”

Can DelBeccaro be so obtuse that he doesn’t even realize that he is making a case against his own party’s willingness to compromise? Indeed, Bush had Kennedy and Sanders (two of the Senate’s most liberal members) and numerous other Democrats who respected their roles as representatives of the people and were determined to work on their behalf, even in difficult circumstances. Who does Obama have? Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Darrell Issa, Michele Bachmann, and a party that is dead set on impeaching him, despite the absence of any legal grounds for doing so.

As for Obama undertaking efforts at building consensus, how could he have been more of a consensus builder than by having adopted long-held Republican policies on the most prominent items in his agenda? DelBeccaro mentions ObamaCare, which was taken nearly in total from the GOP/Heritage Foundation insurance reform that Mitt Romney implemented in Massachusetts. He also mentions the Environmental Protection Agency, whose efforts to put in place the Republican-created Cap and Trade plan was derailed by Republicans. On the budget Obama wanted to allow the Bush tax cuts for the rich to sunset (as Bush’s bill originally mandated), but in a concession to the GOP he agreed to a compromise that drew a line at those with income over $400,000.

The evidence is clear that, contrary to DelBeccaro’s ignorant assertion that “Obama has not undertaken a single effort at building consensus,” the only thing Obama has done is compromise. That has resulted in half-way measures on a variety of issues that might have produced even better results, but for the GOP obstructionism. For instance, we might have a more robust economy, and lower unemployment, with federal dollars financing the rebuilding our nation’s crumbling roads and bridges. We might have a higher minimum wage that would lift millions out of poverty and shrink the expenditures on welfare programs. We might be more energy independent with greater access to renewable sources of energy that don’t destroy the environment – which creates massive, avoidable costs as well.

Nevertheless, DelBeccaro’s column accuses Obama of being overly litigious, without offering a single example of it. And they seem oblivious to the fact that it is the right that has been suing at every opportunity over ObamaCare, or marriage equality, or voter suppression, and culminating with their unprecedented lawsuit by the GOP-run House of Representatives.

So of course the Fox Nationalists post this hopelessly confused diatribe at the very top of their page as if it were worthy of prideful recognition. They seriously seem to have abandoned all reason in favor of projecting their own psychoses unto their ideological foes. Just as they ranted about impeachment for years and then flipped to accuse Democrats of inventing the issue, they have also obstructed the workings of government for years, even suing their opponents, and now they are claiming that Obama is the litigious one.

Is anyone buying this idiocy? Well, anyone other than Fox News viewers, Sarah Palin groupies, and the frightened cave-dwellers hugging their guns and gold and praying for the Apocalypse?

Despite having the top rated cable news network in the country, and a ridiculously undue influence over much of the rest of the mainstream media, conservatives are still not satisfied with their stranglehold on the press. That’s the only explanation for why they keep launching new right-wing cable news networks to compete with Fox News.

Most of these competing enterprises complain that Fox News has betrayed their cause and defected to the enemy liberal camp. Thus the necessity of forming a new network that is devoted to the true conservative agenda that Fox has abandoned. The disappointment with Fox’s brand of conservatism has stirred a flurry of challengers and even a boycott by some determined Tea Party “Fire Ants.”

The latest entry in the field is the ultra-rightist webzine, Newsmax. The CEO of Newsmax, Chris Ruddy, has a staunchly conservative resume going back to the days when he opposed the Clintons and accused them of murdering their friend Vince Foster. These days Ruddy claims to be on more friendly terms with his former adversaries and is positioning his NewsmaxTV as a “kinder, gentler Fox News.” But It’s hard to see where NewsmaxTV will succeed in the wake of the other recent attempts to pry wingnuts and Tea Partiers away from Fox.

In 2010, a project from Hollywood conservative (and Friend of Abe) Kelsey Grammer and former Comcast-Spectacor chairman Ed Snider, was given a flashy fanfare as it promised to bring conservative values to both news and entertainment programming. However, the RightNetwork never seemed to get past the website stage and today doesn’t even have that.

That was followed by the much hyped One America News Network in March of 2013. One America was announced at last year’s CPAC with support from Herring Broadcasting and the “Moonie” Washington Times. It’s founder, Charles Herring, said he was motivated by his perception that “the sources of national news tend to lean to the left…and all we have is Fox.” So far, that has not proven to be a sufficient justification for a new right-leaning network.

And now we have NewsmaxTV – a network that admits that much of its success will rely on the same advertising and hucksterism that fuels Newsmax. That business model is heavily reliant on two non-journalism revenue streams: 1) Selling the email lists of conservative pundits, and 2) Selling highly dubious nutritional “supplements” and medical services. Business week described Newsmax as…

“…a smorgasbord of political, health, and financial information, self-help books, and even vitamin supplements constantly pushed through the website and e-mail lists. This eclectic array of products—the company made $46 million in subscription revenue from its 17 newsletters and $6 million from vitamin supplements in 2013—makes Newsmax less of a news business and more of a strange hybrid of the Heritage Foundation and Amway.”

Given the rapidly expanding roster of competitors, Fox News is surely quaking in their Tea Party tri-corner hats and pilgrim boots as a result of this new player in the right-wing media circus. Keepe your eyes peeled because, if NewsmaxTV is anything like the efforts that preceded it, it isn’t going to be there for very long.

These freakin’ slimeballs at Fox Nation continue to demonstrate that they have no morals whatsoever. Not to mention no integrity, honesty, or decency. They will take any grotesque episode, no matter how far removed from President Obama, and attach it to him by some depraved, alien logic. Take this for instance:

The original article referenced by Fox Nation was from their own Fox News via the Associated Press. It reported on the arrest of Areil Castro, the charges against him, his bail, and went into some detail about the alleged crimes.

For some reason, Fox Nation focused on the one sentence in the 700+ word article that mentioned Castro’s bail. But even more baffling was their insertion of this paragraph:

“The creator of the controversial anti-Islam You Tube video, that the Obama administration used in its talking points as the motivation behind the September 11th attacks in Benghazi, was held without bail. It was later revealed that the attack in Benghazi was not a reaction to the video.”

That text was not anywhere in the original article. It was composed entirely by the Fox Nationalists and inserted into the story without any disclosure that they had fabricated it themselves. It obviously has nothing to do with the story and sticks out for its surreal irrelevance.

For the record, the filmmaker, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was arrested for allegedly violating terms of his probation. The judge, citing probation violations including lying to probation officials, ordered him held without bail, a common occurrence under these circumstances. He pleaded guilty to four of the charges against him and was sentenced to one year in prison and four years of supervised release.

[Update: Fox News is now actively defending this filmmaker who they portray as a “patsy” of the Obama administration]

…..

So what was the point that Fox Nation was making by embedding this extraneous content into the article? Clearly they were drawing some sort of deranged parallel between Obama, Nakoula, and Castro. Perhaps their purpose was to imply that Obama personally interceded to insure that Nakoula was held incommunicado to keep him from exposing Obama’s covert plot to promote the video and inspire a global Islamic uprising. Or maybe Fox was attempting to suggest that Obama had some sympathy for Castro and secretly engineered his bail (at only $8 million). Or maybe Fox just hadn’t written the word “Benghazi” in the past five seconds and thought this would be a good time to slip it in again.

What on earth are these imbeciles thinking? They just lost a historic election that they were convinced would be a cake-walk for the GOP. They underwent what they themselves called a “postmortem” analysis of their epic failures. They were named the “stupid party” by one of their most prominent governors. And yet they are still resorting to the sort of idiocy and extremism that has earned them the lowest favorable ratings in history.

And this wasn’t even the only incident of Castro-izing Democrats today. On Fox’s America Live with Megyn Kelly, their conservative contributor Chris Plante inexplicably said that “Ariel Castro might get the ‘hospitality of the year award’ from the Democrats in Congress.” What unholy orifice did he pull that from?

This is evidence that Fox News and their GOP pals have learned nothing from the 2012 elections. It also proves that they are a gaggle of repulsive and childish mental deficients with no discernible honor or even the common civility that would permit them to go out in public among decent people. Where the fuck does it stop with these cretins?

And not to be left out. the “Moonie” Washington Times joined in with this asinine crap:

In a story promoted by Fox Nation, they reference a “survey” that reveals conclusions that are diametrically opposed to what the Fox Nationalists assert.

On the Fox Nation web site the story is headlined: New Tea Party Survey Destroys Media Myths. The story links to an article in the Washington “Moonie” Times that in turn links to a report (pdf) by the Sam Adams Alliance. The report actually arrives at conclusions that not only do not destroy any media myths, but affirm the popular representations of the Tea Party in the press. Even the Moonies went with a more accurate headline than Fox: ‘Tea party’ leaders use survey to strike back at critics.

The Sam Adams Alliance is, of course, a Tea Party affiliated organization. Their report is not a survey of Tea Party activists at large, but of a select group of 49 individuals identified as leaders. Much of the report is an ego-centric exercise that applauds Tea Crusaders for “standing up for their beliefs,” and having “a positive impact on the country.” As if those aren’t the self-identified goals of every organization from the Girl Scouts to the KKK.

However, the portions of the report that address ideological positions paint a clear picture of the so-called movement. And it is a picture of blatant partisanship. 85.7% of the Tea Crusade’s leaders are opposed to a third political party to challenge the Democrats and Republicans. Perhaps that’s because 62% of them are Republicans already. 27% are Independents and only 10% claim membership in the non-existent Tea Party. Zero percent are Democrats. Additionally, while Sarah Palin has proven to be a total bust in national surveys, she is the top choice (36%) of these 49 Tea Baggers.

So contrary to Fox Nation’s dishonest headline, the phony movement is just what everyone already believes they are: Tea-publicans. And it’s kind of funny that Fox Nation feels it was necessary to layer deceit on more deceit by misrepresenting the results of a survey that itself was conducted by a biased Tea Party affiliate.

Here’s more proof that Rupert Murdoch and his Fox News empire are anxiously awaiting a terrorist attack that they can celebrate. It has already been established that they are aiding and abetting terrorism by helping to spread the fear that terrorists rely on. Fox wants us to be just as afraid as Al Qaeda does. And in pursuit of that goal they publish lies like this one:

The article linked to by the Fox Nationalists appears in the Washington “Moonie” Times. And both so-called “news” enterprises falsely report the congressional testimony by the Directors of National Intelligence and the CIA. Here is the actual content of the testimony:

Sen. Diane Feinstein: What is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the U.S homeland in the next three to six months? High or low?DNI, Dennis Blair: An attempted attack, the priority is certain, I would say.”

Contrary to the sensationalist headlines on Fox Nation and the Washington Times, the administration never said that an attack is “certain.” The operative word is “attempted.” It is a rather obvious and foregone conclusion that terrorists are out there attempting to attack us and others. The question, and the answer, was hardly revealing. But Fox never misses an opportunity to fear monger. And they have a long history of politicizing terror and 9/11.

As if it weren’t bad enough that Fox Nation populates its web site with right-wing hysteria and links to uber-conservative purveyors of propaganda, they have now demonstrated that their editors are (at least) as stupid as their readers are gullible.

Today I observed a graphic at Fox Nation linking to a column in the Washington “Moonie” Times written by Amanda Carpenter, an O’Reilly Factor frequent fluffer. The article itself was chock full of nuttiness that I’ll get to momentarily. First I need to point out that Fox Nation is so desperate to disparage its enemies that they will project whatever demon suits them into their coverage whether it’s there or not. Here is the graphic showing the groups they say are allegedly mobilizing against town hall protesters:

The National Endowment for the Arts??? Are they really mobilizing against town hall protesters? Were those artists who were crashing community centers and public halls where Tea Baggers were fighting to keep the insurance companies between you and your doctor?

The problem with this picture is that Carpenter’s article says nothing about the National Endowment for the Arts whose logo is prominently displayed in the upper-right corner. There is a passage that mentions the NEA, but she is referring to the National Education Association. Rather than ascertain the facts, Fox Nation saw an acronym that could just as well have belonged to a favorite foe of theirs, so they giddily inserted the wrong logo into their graphic. And they consider themselves to be a “news” organization. I suppose it’s easier to demonize artists than teachers. The only thing Fox Nation cares about is assembling the usual targets of their wrath – community organizers (ACORN), unions (SEIU), minorities (NCLR), and, of course, those subversive artists – for a public whipping.

As an artist myself, I wouldn’t mind seeing the Endowment get more actively involved in countering the thugs who are brazenly trying to shut down democratic discourse. I have long believed that the role artists have traditionally played in social movements has been diminished in this age of corporate controlled marketing and the cultural aversion to artists who speak their minds (i.e. shut up and sing). But for Fox Nation to falsely charge that the NEA is mobilizing against protesters (an absurd charge in any context) is slanderous. And it is especially egregious when the slander is the result of an idiotic editor who can’t figure out which organiztion he’s supposed to be hating.

The article itself is rich with ridiculous reportage. It’s premise is that there is something terribly wrong with the way that Democrats plan to respond to the right-wing mobs that are disrupting town hall meetings between congressional representatives and their constituents.

It has been well documented that the right is coordinating their protests through political and industry front groups like Conservatives for Patients Rights, Americans for Prosperity, and FreedomWorks. These organized creators of chaos have distributed instructions on how to cause a commotion. Participating in a productive and civil discussion is the farthest thing from their minds.

What makes this article exceptionally ludicrous is that Carpenter’s examples of what she characterizes as untoward behavior from leftie activists pales in comparison to what the Tea Bagging bullies have put forth. Let’s take a look:

Ask the Member’s staff what would be most helpful and talk through a strategy for making sure the right messages don’t get drowned out by chaotic protesters.

Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up.

Address the [Member of Congress] directly with a positive message: Remember, these Members need cover and they are getting beaten up by right wing zealots in these meetings.

Be Disruptive Early And Often: You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.

Don’t get into a shouting match with them. Instead, prep people on our side to keep raising the questions that we want answered.

Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda.

So while the left wants to be helpful, positive, and avoid shouting matches, the right wants to lie, disrupt and rattle the targets of their tantrums. Which side really sounds like a mob to you?

The fact that Carpenter and the Washington Times thought that it served their purpose to illustrate these differences just defies comprehension. And to complete the circle of the Murdoch-driven disinformation campaign, Carpenter appeared on Fox News this morning to make the same scandalous assertion that health care advocates are conspiring to be “helpful.” OMG!

Here are a few examples of how the so-called “liberal” media rushed to smear Republican Gov. Mark Sanford after he surfaced from his hike in Appalachia …er… vacation in South America …er… tryst with his Argentinian mistress. These are emails sent to Sanford to solicit him for interviews.

Griff Jenkins of Fox News
“Having known the Governor for years and even worked with him when he would host radio shows for me — I find this story and the media frenzy surrounding it to be absolutely ridiculous! Please give him my best.”

If the Gov does an interview and its exclusive, it will make air on the tv channel and our radio news service all across the country. And I’m not sure if you’ve seen the stuff I do on the channel as a reporter, but I work mostly for our primetime coverage – Oreilly, Hannity, Greta, Beck – so there likely would be primetime coverage as well for some soundbites of the gov dispelling this flap.

Jenkins, you may recall, is one of the contingent of Fox News ambush journalists (along with Jesse Watters, and Porter Barry). He was also prominent in last April’s Tea Baggery. In this affair he is unabashedly promising a political delinquent favorable treatment.

Brendan Miniter of the Wall Street Journal
“Someone at WSJ should be fired for today’s story. Ridiculous.”

Miniter is actually bashing his own paper for publishing a story that merely reported that Sanford was off hiking the Appalachian Trail. So I guess that I’d agree with Miniter. Someone should be fired for having gotten the story so wrong. And Miniter should go with him for pandering to the story’s subject.

Joseph Deoudes of the Washington Times
“If you all want to speak on this publicly, you’re welcome to Washington Times Radio. You know that you will be on friendly ground here!”

Isn’t nice to know that there is “friendly ground” available for wayward Republicans? Not that this is news coming from the Moonie Times, a perennial happy place for rightists.

Ann Edelberg of MSNBC’s Morning Joe
“Of course the Gov has an open invite to a friendly place here at MJ, if he would like to speak out.”

And if anyone can call themselves a friend of Sanford, it’s Joe Scarborough, the former Florida congressman who had his own problems with the press when an intern turned up dead in his office.

Jake Tapper of ABC News
“NBC spot was slimy.” […] “For the record, I think the TODAY show spot was pretty insulting.”

Tapper’s main problem here is not that he is offering Sanford a safe haven, but that he is deliberately bashing his competition. Tapper is crossing the line in order to get a story. To his credit, he apologized and acknowledged that what he did was inappropriate. None of his colleagues have yet to do so.

Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central
As you may know, I declared myself Governor of South Carolina last night. I went power mad for abut 40 seconds before learning that Gov. Sanford was returning today.

If the governor is looking for a friendly place to make light of what I think is a small story that got blown out of scale I would be happy to have him on. In person here, on the phone, or in South Carolina.

Stay strong, Stephen

Et tu, Colbert? As the most reputable journalist of the bunch, it is disheartening to see that Colbert has compromised his impeccable journalistic credentials (a Peabody winner) in order to suck up to this miscreant governor. Since Colbert is on record as being philosophically opposed to apologies, I wouldn’t expect one to be forthcoming. In fact, it would hardly be necessary for him to bother correcting the record since, as he has noted, “reality has a well known liberal bias.” So what’s the point?

This is a textbook example of how a dishonest news enterprise will employ deceit in pursuit of a partisan agenda. All it takes is an absence of conscience and ethics, and an intent to deliberately mislead your readers.

Ever since ABC announced that they would host a health care themed town hall from the White House, the conservative media machine has been blasting the move as evidence that the media is “in the tank” for Barack Obama. In an effort to advance this theory, the Washington Times commissioned a study by the Center for Responsive Politics on the campaign donations made by ABC employees.

The conclusion, as represented by the Times, was that ABC is a partisan operation that is unfit to call themselves a news service. They cited data from the study that said that over $124,000 was donated by ABC employees to Obama, as compared to about $1,500 to McCain or other candidates. In addition, they sought comments from Dan Gainor of the Business & Media Institute, a far right-wing group affiliated with ultra-conservative Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center. Gainor said that…

“ABC is in bed with their source, so to speak. ABC is supposed to be a news organization, not a producer of infomercials for national health care. And I wonder what they would have done if the Bush administration had asked for positive programming to support the war on terror or Social Security initiatives.”

Gainor couldn’t have come up with two worse examples to make his point. The Bush administration asked for, and received, multiple programming opportunities to hawk his war mongering and Social Security privatization schemes – including one-sided town halls and air time on both broadcast and cable networks.

However, the New York Observer obtained the same study from the CRP and discovered what the Times had conveniently left out. As it happens, the vast majority of the donations cited in the study were from ABC employees who had nothing whatsoever to do with the production of news. The actual breakdown revealed that, of the $124,000, only $885 came from the news division.

The Times was surely aware of these facts, they simply decided to misconstrue them in order to mislead their readers and promote the false allegation of partisanship on the part of ABC News. It is this sort of brazen dishonesty that makes one wonder why anyone would give credence to anything published by the Washington Times.

A couple of weeks ago the Washington Times published a story about beleaguered conservatives in the entertainment industry. Just the fact that the story appeared in the Washington Times would normally be enough reason to laugh it off, but the article gets even funnier than one might imagine. It begins:

“A group of politically conservative and centrist Hollywood figures organized by actor Gary Sinise and others has been meeting quietly in restaurants and private homes, forming a loose-knit network of entertainers who share common beliefs like supporting U.S. troops and traditional American values […] The group, whose members call themselves “Friends of Abe” after Abraham Lincoln [are they sure it’s not Vigoda?], was organized as an underground movement because of fears that prominent industry titans with outspoken liberal views would retaliate, said participants. They often were reluctant to name members of the group in interviews for fear it would hurt their careers.”

To the extent that this shadowy conclave of rebels was willing to shed their reluctance to name names (behavior with which conservatives should be familiar), they thoroughly undermined their stated mission. Those courageous enough to step forward include some of Hollywood’s biggest stars:

Gary Sinise

Pat Boone

Jon Voight

Kelsey Grammer

Lionel Chetwynd

And this list doesn’t include big conservative names that have not been associated with Friends of Abe:

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bruce Willis

Tom Selleck

Patricia Heaton

Adam Sandler

Mel Gibson

Clint Eastwood

Chuck Norris

Conservatives are desperately trying to carve a place for themselves in a Hollywood they believe does not want them. There have been at least three articles in the Washington Times on the subject. It has also been taken up by the Los Angeles Times, the National Review, and Rupert Murdoch’s Weekly Standard did a cover story on it.

But can they really be serious about alleging discrimination, and fear of retaliation when, by their own accounts, they are enjoying stupendous success and popularity? Of course they can. Fealty to the truth or reality has never stopped a conservative before. It’s what the Bush administration relies on whenever they describe programs like “Clear Skies,”“Healthy Forests,” or “iraqi Freedom.” It’s what allows John McCain to complain that the media is unfair to him, or that Barack Obama is a flip-flopper. It is a strategy wherein you assert the polar opposite of what you actually mean – what actually is. This round of bitching is emblematic of right-wing methodology in politics.

It is also ironic that these efforts to exalt celebrity should bubble up at a time when the McCain campaign is mocking celebrity with juvenile ads about Britney Spears.

So it should surprise no one that conservatives would assert that, if they were to disclose their views in Hollywood, they would never be successful, and then trot out a bevy of successful Hollywood conservatives to make their case. This is the way they work, and they pray that the American people are stupid enough to fall for it. I think that’s what they really mean by a “Faith-based Initiative.”